A way of life that could grow on you

Updated 11:59 pm, Friday, August 9, 2013

Photo: Sarah Tressler/San Antonio Express-News

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Brittany Micheli, left, and her daughter Scarlett gather eggs and feed the chickens at Miss Scarlett's Farm. The eggs will go to a farmers market, where the Michelis also sell home-grown produce and honey.

Brittany Micheli, left, and her daughter Scarlett gather eggs and feed the chickens at Miss Scarlett's Farm. The eggs will go to a farmers market, where the Michelis also sell home-grown produce and honey.

Photo: Sarah Tressler/San Antonio Express-News

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Brittany Micheli gathers tomatoes on Miss Scarlett's Farm, named for her daughter, Scarlett. The Micheli family are farmers market vendors based out of Bulverde.

Brittany Micheli gathers tomatoes on Miss Scarlett's Farm, named for her daughter, Scarlett. The Micheli family are farmers market vendors based out of Bulverde.

Photo: Sarah Tressler/San Antonio Express-News

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Scarlett Micheli, the namesake for Miss Scarlett's Farm, cradles her favorite chicken after letting the hens out for the day. Miss Scarlett's Farm is a vendor for the farmers markets at The Rim and Helotes.

Scarlett Micheli, the namesake for Miss Scarlett's Farm, cradles her favorite chicken after letting the hens out for the day. Miss Scarlett's Farm is a vendor for the farmers markets at The Rim and Helotes.

Photo: Sarah Tressler/San Antonio Express-News

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Anthony Micheli feeds his chickens on his family's farm. The free-range hens lay eggs that the Michelis sell at local farmers markets.

Anthony Micheli feeds his chickens on his family's farm. The free-range hens lay eggs that the Michelis sell at local farmers markets.

Photo: Sarah Tressler/San Antonio Express-News

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Gerard Slawinski harvests tomatoes for the Micheli family, who own Miss Scarlett's Farm in Bulverde.

Gerard Slawinski harvests tomatoes for the Micheli family, who own Miss Scarlett's Farm in Bulverde.

Photo: Sarah Tressler/San Antonio Express-News

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Scarlett and her favorite chicken.

Scarlett and her favorite chicken.

Photo: Sarah Tressler/San Antonio Express-News

A way of life that could grow on you

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In the wide-open, grassy Hill Country just north of San Antonio, Anthony Micheli wakes up every morning around 5 a.m. to start tending his garden. On Wednesday, he received help putting new tomato plants in the ground.

“So I dig — with my hands — in the dirt?” a reporter asked, unsure.

“Can you do that? It's pretty simple,” he said. “Everything we do is in the dirt.”

That, in a nutshell, is the philosophy underpinning everyday operations at Miss Scarlett's Farm, one of about two dozen local farmers market vendors that supply the markets at The Rim, Leon Springs and Helotes.

Aug. 4-10 is National Farmers Market Week, a time to celebrate homegrown produce, local goods and the reassuring simplicity of being able to trace where the food on your plate came from.

It's also when the summer harvest — yellow squash, eggplants, jalapeños and tomatoes — is being collected at Miss Scarlett's Farm in Bulverde.

After spending the morning planting new tomato plants for the fall, Anthony, his wife Brittany, and his 5-year-old daughter Scarlett (for whom the farm is named) mosey through the squash patch across the yard to let the chickens out. Princess, a young gray cat that eats chicken feed and tends to stay at Scarlett's heels, follows them.

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While the chickens peck at feed and scratch the dirt in the open field next to the Micheli's home, Brittany and Anthony check the coops for eggs. They have more than 400 chickens; today they collect about four-dozen eggs in brown, white and blue hues.

Scarlett uses the chicken time to cradle her favorite chicken, a small polish hen with a feathery crest that looks like a Joan Rivers wig.

“These guys lay enough eggs to pay our phone bill and our electricity bill every month,” Anthony says, gesturing to the hens. Between the eggs, the produce and the honey, the Michelis can sustain a comfortable country lifestyle that keeps everyone close to home.

Life wasn't so simple for the Michelis before Scarlett was born. Anthony used to earn a living in a more conventional manner, and it kept him away from his family.

“Before this, I was running heavy equipment and building streets,” he says. “I was working 12, 14 hours a day.”

Two months after Scarlett was born, he decided that needed to change. Both Anthony and Brittany came from farming families; so the transition was a no-brainer. Anthony's father helped him get a garden started, and Miss Scarlett's Farm was born.

“I'm able to be with her all the time pretty much,” he says. “A typical day for us, we work out here until about noon, and then me and the little girl, we'll either go to a movie, or Incredible Pizza or the river.”

Gerard Slawinski was hired by the Michelis to help with some of the work. On Wednesday, he was stripping the summer tomato plants — picking all the tomatoes from the plants so they could be replaced with newer plants.

Slawinski says that after years of working in the restaurant industry, he finds a lot of value in knowing where his food comes from. And any of the more than 400 people who fell ill after June's Cyclospora outbreak — which was later traced to Mexico-based Taylor Farms' prepackaged salads supplied to restaurants — would probably agree.

“The more you work in food service, the more you realize it's a good idea to know who owns the restaurant you're eating in,” Slawinski says as he picks tomatoes. “Because then somebody's actually accountable for it.”

For Slawinski, that same mentality is what drives people to shop at farmers markets, where they can meet the folk who have grown the fruits and vegetables by hand, raised the chickens that laid the eggs or tended the hives for the bees that produce the honey.